Get your money for nothing and your... oh... wait.. I used that one already. Um... "Freebird!": Ads and Social Networking

 Scott Karp writes a great blog called Publishing 2.0 and he's talked several times about paying for advertising in a world where lots of content can be created and published for free.  What's the point?  Why bother?  Why not just throw some free ads up and let virality take its course?
It's a great point, but I have a few counters.

In the instance of Wendy's creating a MySpace profile, which anyone can do for free:

"What if Wendy’s won’t pay? Will MySpace have to tear down the page? That would be a great advertiser relations program — policing for unpaid commercial pages and tearing them down."

Actually, that's entirely fair and should be expected.  There are lots of instances of software and APIs that are free for non-commercial usage but paid for a commercial license.  If you are using MySpace to make a buck, doesn't MySpace have a right to take a reasonable piece of that buck?  There would have to be tiers, of course...     My local pool hall shouldn't have to pay much more than the price of a Yellow Pages ad for their profile.

Plus, going paid for commercial, just like Craigslist is doing for NYC commercial real estate, gets rid of a lot of spam. 
What's the value of paying?  Think of MySpace like the RedHat of the ad world.  RedHat packages free Linux with a service guarantee and support.  That's what I think of when I think of Advertising 2.0...  sure, viral videos are free to post, but you want more than just a single number--hits.  You want demographics.  You want to see what other types of videos people are watching.  You need data and there's where the MySpaces and YouTubes should really be ramping up.  Give me a whole reporting package that I can show my boss when I create a commercial MySpace profile that tells me a lot about the users.  What's the #1 band of the people who friend me?  Age?  Race?  You can't do that with a free profile but that's very valuable data.

That's one of the things we're focusing on with our upcoming consumer product.  Anyone can sell a virtual t-shirt direct to consumers or as a sponsored ad buy, but I think the difference is in the data and ongoing relationship you build with the users.  Businesses thrive on consumer data and I think that's going to be a major asset of Advertising 2.0.  If you can put a viral video in front of someone, cool... but what you really need if you are a business is a call to action to convert those folks into customers or at least some useable data.  The platforms have, need, or are definitely working on building out those tools.

In a world of human wreckage: Does MySpace have staying power?

When MySpace got bought for $580 million, I thought it was pricey.  Then I thought it was a bargain.  Now I wonder whether or not it will survive.  A lot has been made of the future of the largest social network.  Some people say that social networks have a natural limit to their size, because they cease to become cool at scale.  Others think that they'll never be monetized well, because monetization means overcommercialization. 

Will MySpace die?  Maybe, but not because it's fundamentally impossible to sustain a social network online.  I think there are some keys to sustainability for any social network needs to follow to last, and frankly, I'm surprised the networks we've seen so far do such a poor job at minding them.  They're not groundbreaking by any stretch, and frankly, I think they're pretty obvious.

Don't shoot yourself in the foot...the site has to work.  Friendster crumbled under the weight of its own initial viral success.  It didn't throw nearly enough servers and bandwidth at their early problems and the site became nearly unusable at peak times.  It really surprises me how often MySpace pages don't load or when features don't work.  It's not enough to be crippling, but it is something to watch.  If YouTube doesn't have this problem serving all those videos, MySpace shouldn't, figuring as much of the content comes from YouTube and Photobucket anyway.

Keep the bad guys out.  This is really the Achilles heal of MySpace.  Probably about 3/4 of the friend requests I get are from fake people.  Mass invites from bands are one thing...at least those are driven by actual humans who might actually have something legitimate to offer me.  The sexy webcam stuff I could largely do without.  It's always from blondes anyway, and I don't really like blondes.  :)  Filtering spam shouldn't really be that hard to do.  Part of it comes from defensive messures like sender flagging, but some of it is in the design of the site.  Facebook does a great job of keeping the rifraff out by keeping communication within networks of people.

Be the best a what you do best.  YouTube was the first to flash and had the most link dense UI, therefore, the best technology for streaming, discovering and having your videos discovered.  They still are.  LinkedIn has great tools for maximizing the value of your network, even if the site is boring and they don't do a lot of the contact management I'm looking for.  What is MySpace's core strength?  Self expression?  That job is outsourced to the freelayoutosphere.  Music discovery?  Music discovery is sort of accidently social on MySpace...land on a friend's page, hear their music.  Tools like Pandora and last.fm represent the cutting edge in music discovery and last.fm provides a very rich social dataset that could drive powerful and addicting applications on MySpace.  MySpace would benefit from innovating around this core functionality or integrating with a partner.  Popping the player out of the page and and allowing user radio stations and multiple groups in one player would be a start.

Drive usage through usage.  Despite the uproar, I think Facebook's mini-feed feature was brilliant.  By providing information on what your friends are up to, particularly because these are people you know, it drives more interaction through data exhaust.  MyBlogLog does this quite well.  People stop at my blog, they leave tracks, I get curious, I click, I'm on their blog, they click back to me or leave me a message.  Without trying, I wind up using the service more and more at each sitting.  This is what gets people sucked in and continuing to use the site, because it turns the experience into a living and breathing thing where things are going on that you don't want to miss. 

Commercial must be functional.  Brands are not my friends so if I'm going to friend them, there's got to be a compelling reason for it.  Whether it's to get digital assets like ringtones, or event dates, you need to improve my experience by adding commercialism, not distract from it.  Going deeper than just friend requests would be great. I'm friends with Casino Royale on MySpace, but that hasn't gotten me anywhere yet.  I couldn't even yank the trailer for display on my page.  It hasn't driven a ticket purchase yet...no ringtone... Kind of superficial relationship actually.   

Promote users. YouTube is becoming a place to get discovered.  MySpace has Cool New People.  del.icio.us had the /popular list.  Even Typepad has a blog of the day.  People want to see their name in lights, and they'd like a reasonable shot at stardom that feels like its in their grasp.

Communicate openly with users. One thing I loved about being on the VC side was the access to the creators of a web service.  When I didn't like something or I wanted to request a feature, there was someone to tell, someone who would tell me its in the works or why it can't or won't be done.  Craig Newmark accomplishes this by dedicating himself nearly fulltime to customer support and letting someone else run the business of Craigslist.  Facebook has a blog without comments and MySpace has Tom, who most people don't really believe is really a person...  at least you don't see him commenting on a lot of random profiles.   This is a difficult thing to scale, but I think it's very powerful.  I want to hear from the founders what they're working on, how they're solving problems, etc.  That makes me more patient and makes me feel like I'm being listened to.  Without open lines of communication directly with the staff, people give up and go somewhere else.

I hope MySpace does survive, because their tendency towards openness and scale have a lot of untapped potential, and I'd hate to see it die on the vine.  That would make advertisers take social networks, and the power of consumers, less seriously.

New Functional Avatar Skins... very cool!

If you've never clicked through to my blog from RSS and seen my avatar or if you don't usually play around with him, today is the day to click through, up and over.  We just released some functional skins and I'm featuring what we're calling the FAQ... its like a little audio profile.  Now, you can get a whole bunch of scenes in the same avatar.  Sweet!  This way, you can keep the avatar as an audio introduction, but also have a daily message that gets changed.

I'm blue, da boo de, da boo da...

P1020165, originally uploaded by nicolemarotta.

Adi, the CEO of Oddcast, throws a big Halloween party every year. Unfortunately, there aren't any good photos of my costume, but there's a candid shot that I was caught in that gives you a sense of it. I dressed as a Blue Man! :)

links for 2006-10-31

• Businesspundit: Sex, Politics, and Religion at the Office
  (tags: relationships business dating advice disagreement openminded)
• Mobility Site: Thinnest E-TEN Pocket PC Phone Coming Soon - X500
  My next phone?
  (tags: phones pocketpc)

Timeoutnewyork.tv photo contest win

Check this out... timeoutnewyork.tv is using one of my kayaking photos for their website this week.  Nice!

Girl power

Ok, so the worlds of finance, tech and probably to a lesser extent politics are still boys clubs, but I like to point out when my favorite gender makes some noise.

Found two cool new female bloggers...

A video blog on finance called Wallstrip hosted by Lindsay Campbell.  She's still looking for a "booyah"-like catchphrase, but Jim Cramer should still be watching his back.

Ashley Cecil paints politics and other newsworthy items... literally.  I'm really tempted to buy the Bubba painting...  Gotta love that little stubby thumbs up he gives...she's captured it perfectly. 

Also, BizDev2.0 is going to feature some very successful women in technology...  Catherine Levene, formally of the NYT Digital and now working with TheFind.com, Tina Sharkey, SVP of AIM and Social Media at AOL, and now a late addition, Zia Daniell Wigder from Jupiter Media.

Now if we could only skew the 90/10 boy/girl ration in the audience.

Some people think this stuff doesn't much matter, but for me, getting perspectives from a wide variety of people is one of the reasons why I blog and participate in these communities.  I hope we can see more of this in the future.

 

 

Technorati tags: women, gender, technology, politics, finance, wallstrip, bizdev.20, nextNY

Because there's never been a more appropriate time to quote Rage Against the Machine

Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me.

I think I'll go Google someone on Yahoo! now.

links for 2006-10-27

• Too much Junk Mail? | How Do I Stop It | Stop Junk Mail Now with greendimes
  If this is real, I love this... I've wanted this service for a while.
  (tags: junkmail snailmail mail trees environment)
• Taxi Fare Finder
  (tags: nyc Maps cabs cabfare)

Business plan - Work around here?

I love the lunch date... always have. It's casual, it's public, and it has a clear beginning and an end. No matter how bad it is, it will end in an hour and you're going to get fed either way. In dating, downside protection goes a long way. 

So, it's really struck me that no one has ever built a dating/social networking service around lunch or other work location centric stuff. I've had a lot of wacky ideas in the past, but this is one that has been bouncing around my head for a while that I might seriously consider putting some time and effort into. So if this is interesting to you, please do not just go off and steal it...I may want to help. 

Searching people by where they live really doesn't capture where they spend their time, particularly in a metropolitan area. For most people, five days a week, they spent at least eight hours a day in one spot...more time then they probably spend at home. 

Lunch dating also connects people along a different line...food. Finding a great place for lunch by your office is a big win, not to mention finding someone else close by who also likes Pakistani vegan organic pizza. 

You could branch out from lunch to include coffeeshops, the gym, happy hours.  This taps into what the keeps the Facebook strong...offline connections.  When you friend someone on Facebook, you see them in your English class.  Here, you could bump into someone at your local Starbucks.

The business model taps into the highly soughtafter local advertising model. Not only could restaurants make offers to local customers for specials and discounts, but think of all of the other things you could advertise to single people when you know where they work, what they do, and know a lot about their preferences. It's a goldmine of metadata. 

So here are some of the rules and features I think the service needs to have: 

First, I think you roll this out city by city, starting with New York. 

Profile creation should be easy. You should be able to pull photos in from URLs, or automatically from Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, etc. You should also be able to suck in your music, movies, and personal interest data from these sites as well. 

The professional information should be pretty comprehensive as well...maybe a LinkedIn integration. You should be able to put in that you are a trader versus a portfolio manager versus a broker...not just "Finance". 

Outlook/calendar integration... Remember, these are office people. Plus, we'd need people to be able to say that they'd rather eat at 12 versus 2. Scheduling, and the limits people have on lunch, are important criteria. 

Privacy...people should be able to tell the system exactly where they work and be searchable, but not have all that info show up. So, if I find someone "two blocks away" I don't really need to know exactly where that is. 

Let the venue owners own their networks. Each restaurant should have a page which becomes its own social network. Maybe you work with a Seemless Web or someone who has channel penetration there to allow people who favorite or friend a restaurant to get special deals or vote for specials, etc.  Starbucks, Jamba Juice, and New York Sports Club could be major contributors to the site here in NYC.

What do you like to talk about at lunch? Work? Work off limits? Politics off limits? A few cues about what makes for a good lunch topic might go a long way. 

So, is this a completely ridiculous idea?  Think it will fly?  What else does it need?  I'd love your feedback.

UPDATE:  Itsjustlunch.com is not a competitor here.  This is a website that you join for free that is advertising supported.  Its Just Lunch costs you hundreds of dollars for an expert to match you up with someone... very different service. 

links for 2006-10-26

• bizdev2 in NextNY
  Night before TechCrunch NYC... quite a week for NYC tech. We'd love to have you join if you were in. Trade invites? :)
  (tags: web2.0 nyc bizdev2.0)
• New audience metric needed: engagement « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger
  (tags: engagement mevertising marketing branding)

Yahoo is a pain in the tag

Wait... so Yahoo! is still developing its bookmarks offering?  WTF?  Seriously...  WTF?!  They're even going to integrate the y! bookmarks into its search.  Do you really want search results mixed in with the bookmarks of Yahoo! bookmarks users or would you rather it be del.icio.us users?  That's like asking someone who has a BetaMax machine to record this week's episode of Lost.

A lot of people think that Yahoo! is such a great place for startups to wind up, but it seems to me that Google, more so than Yahoo!, actually integrates its acquisitions.  Urchin became Google Analytics.  Keyhole became Google Earth.  Flickr and del.icio.us became...  Flickr and del.icio.us, in-house competitors to Yahoo! Photos and Yahoo! Bookmarks. 
It's really unfortunate that we haven't seen more integration.  Hopefully, NewsCorp will do more with Digg.  Kinda sucks that Digg is going to fetch between $100-150 million...  del.icio.us is so much more fundamental of a platform for search.  Eh...  hindsight is 20/20.  Sometimes you hold on and you wind up with a YouTube, and sometimes you wind up with a Friendster.

Technorati tags: yahoo!, del.icio.us, digg

Avatar Crazy... Playing with the competition

So, you'll notice, if you're on my page, four new additions to my sidebar...   a Yahoo! Avatar, a WeeMee, a Meez, and a Zwinky.

We have competition, and if I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist, Voki will pretty much suck...  so instead, I'm embracing them.  Welcome to my blog.  What's that you say, guys?  Oh.. you didn't.  Nevermind.  ;)

So here's my quick take on them...   My Yahoo! Avatar is doing Tae Kwan Do at a school gym.  You might not know this, but I am, in fact, a blackbelt in TKD, and I practiced at Fordham so that's what's going on there.  He's cool... looks nice.   I wasn't a fan of the creation interface there... lots of options for everything... not a great way to sort through them, so admittedly, I just picked some of the first stuff I saw. 

In general, I guess my big issue with all of these pictures is that I'd like to do something more with them.  Pictures on my blog don't do a lot for me...  almost everything else in my blog is interactive in some way.   

So my WeeMee is feeling sort of Bond-like...  so I've got him in London with a martini and a suit.  Cute.  The WeeMee interface is really easy...   very quick to create.

My Meez looks very slick...   When I was creating him, he was awesome... he swung the bat and I could even put him in a flying car if I wanted.  I'm not sure why he's not moving now.  I thought he exported in an animated GIF.  Either way, he's not up to much now and that's kind of disappointing, even though he looks really cool.  UPDATE...  I missed the animated export... now he moves.

Now, my Zwinky is built in Flash, so I expect him to do more than blink, but again, not much going on there.  Plus, apparently, they have a thing against bald guys...  bald was not an option, so I might just take him off on principle.  Not only that, you need to install a search toolbar to get him...   He's been built by IAC to generate search traffic and I hear he does a good job of that, making him very profitable for them.  Good for him, but that's not really what I want him for.  I don't think you'll see too many updates from him, because I don't really want the toolbar.

So there you have it...   now there are five Charlies staring back at you on my blog.   

Being ceonyc...

I use a lot of web services, and I sign up for even more...pretty much always with the same username...ceonyc.  It's even on my car.  For anyone who doesn't know by now, "ceo" happens to be my initials and "nyc" is where I live.  It doesn't mean I want to be the head of the city.  Anyway, this usage has had the amusing, but unintended effect of plastering the web with my screename.  The only thing I don't have related to it is the actual domain, which is taken by a New York City strip club.  Funny thing is, the Google search doesn't even put them on the front page.  They might as well give me the domain, because it doesn't really seem to be working for them.  :)   

There was also one other thing I didn't use ceonyc for, and that was my AOL screename, which has been stuck on ceo21 since 1998, when I first started using AOL.  21 is my number in baseball and softball and just about anything else that needs a number.  This week, I finally took the plunge and started asking people to IM me at ceonyc.  I had the name, but I wasn't using it because it was a pain to port over, one by one.  Unfortunately, I just got new business cards, so they'll have my old screename on them until I run out.  Eventually, though, I'll be on the web, unified under one identity....

ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc, ceonyc

There are lots of other places where I use this, too, but I don't think I really use any of them regularly...

links for 2006-10-24

• Getting into this online stuff: Part I - Blogging as the Industry Cocktail Party
  (tags: Blogging fordhamclass networking)
• Trailers for the Masses: Death of a President (2006): Trailer
  (tags: movies)

Getting into this online stuff: Part I - Blogging as the Industry Cocktail Party

I find myself talking to a lot of people about why I blog, why they should blog, what a blog is, what it isn't, etc...  I'll be doing that a lot more this spring as I'm teaching an undergraduate class at Fordham on the professional uses of blogging, social networks, and using discovery tools.  So, I decided to write a series of posts outlining the basics of participating in what's going on online right now...  from the why to the how. 

Most of the regular readers here already get this stuff, but this is the kind of post you give to your friend who doesn't blog, or to your boss who doesn't understand why your company should be blogging, or people who still have 1 LinkedIn contact or who don't use RSS.  This first post is for all the people I encounter who don't get blogging.   In future posts, I'll cover other important tools, like RSS, del.icio.us, and LinkedIn.

The word blog has been so overused that people are sort of immune to it now, thinking they know what blogging is all about and whether or not it is for them.  Here's the best way I can describe blogging "slightly professionally" to someone who doesn't get it.  When I say that, I mean that I blog about what I do because I'm passionate about it and want to connect with others in my field.  I don't do it as part of my job or specifically to pitch and sell products.

It's like a big industry cocktail party with an open bar.

1) So, first off, no matter what industry you're in, you can always fill a cocktail party given an open bar.  There are millions of blogs out there, so chances are, even if you're a clam shucker, there's a clam shucking blog out there for you.

2) Everyone is a little buzzed...a little loose.  That means they're feeling comfortable enough not to put on a front and willing to say something provocative every once in a while.  Plus, bloggers are usually  open to chatting it up with just about anyone.  No wallflowers here.

3) You can try to talk to everyone, but you won't remember any of the conversations or the people...best to find a handful of people you actually like connecting with and give them a little more time.  Start out reading a handful of blogs, giving thought to what they have to say, and commenting before you drink from the firehose.

4) Listen, don't wait to talk.  People focus too much about what they're going to say in their blog, but if everyone went into this party itching to get something said, it would probably be a pretty obnoxious, self centered crowd.  Try actually being interested in what the other person has to say first.

5) The conversation will stray.  Just because you're at an industry party doesn't mean that all you talk about is your job.  These are all people with interests, hobbies, passions...making for a unusually well rounded crowd.  So, if you're going to chat internet marketing with someone, you'll probably enjoy it more with the guy who also rockclimbs like you do.  And, chances are, in a crowd of web marketers, that person exists.

6)  Why would all these people be interested in what you have to say?  Well, they wouldn't, but that's not really the way you approach a cocktail party is it?  I hope not.  You don't stick your head up and shout over the crowd...you try to circulate among the crowd and sometimes the conversation sticks and sometimes it doesn't.  That's a good thing, though.  You only want the people sticking around who share interests.  You don't want bunch of people who feel obligated to read your blog but never have any useful response because they have no idea what you're writing about.  You don't need to talk to, and its almost impossible to talk to, 100 people at once at a cocktail party, and the best conversations are usually between two or three people.  Don't worry about your traffic.

7) If you don't like sharing your personal life, I'm sure that's not going to be a problem.  If you want to write about all your bad first dates, that's fine, but that's not the kind of blogging we're talking about.  Similarly, that's more the kind of conversation you might have at the after party, not in front of this industry party with your boss, your best client, and potential next client.

8)  Meet people that are going to help you enjoy the party, not people who you think you need to meet.  First off, the industry notables are going to get mobbed at a party like this, and they definitely do in the blog world.  Second, they're often not the most interesting people to talk to.  Don't you just get kind of sick of the way people fawn over the who's who?  Treat everyone like a who.

9)  Like a cocktail party, what you do outside of the blogging is a lot more meaningful than within the blog.  Some people are a lot better at working a party than they are at their actual job.  At the same time, though, I think you're a little bit limited in how well you can work a party if you aren't passionate about what you do, work hard to stay on top of your industry, etc.  That's going to show through at a cocktail party, and a blog.  People who "mail in" their jobs also tend to be boring bloggers and worse party guests.

10) And finally, following up after the cocktail party is how true networking comes to fruition.  Being a blogger who doesn't respond and interact with their audience is like a person who takes a lot of business cards and never gets in touch with people afterward... it is sort of a waste of everyone's time.

links for 2006-10-22

• RollingStones.com community
  (tags: music rollingstones)

Worst Scrabble Letters Ever

Worst Scrabble Letters Ever, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

links for 2006-10-21

• Shut Up Tim McCarver!!! Tim McCarver @ ShutUpTimMcCarver.com
  (tags: sports baseball funny)
• Certified email with delivery receipts, silent tracking, proof-of-opening history, security and timestamps.
  Wow... this works. Not sure how, but impressive... and scary.
  (tags: email tracking)

Scrobbling Brainteaster

Here's a problem:

I listen to my iPod on the way into work and at the gym.

I listen to Last.fm at work.

The iTunes that is connected to my iPod is the one at home, where all my music is.

Last.fm will not accept submissions earlier than the last submitted song.

So, what happens is that I listen at the gym, listen at work, but when I sync my iPod at home, none of my gym songs, which occurred before my work listening, get added to Last.fm. 

But, I can't link the iPod to two computers and sync when I get into work and get my recently played data into the system before I start listening at work.

Very frustrating.

Any ideas?

We IM for this...

IM conversation between me and my friend who I've known since 5 year old T-ball...

cuth23b: Goes back to my point, hitters are stupid. It's why we should have both made the majors

cuth23b: You as my catcher

cuth23b: Me as the lefty pitcher

cuth23b: Just outhinking everyone in the box

Ceo21: Yes, but then both of our bats would need to be in the lineup

Ceo21: Well, no, not if we went to an AL team

cuth23b: Now you're thinking

Ceo21: I don't want to play for the Yanks, though

Ceo21: can we pick a neutral team

cuth23b: Hmmm...

cuth23b: How about Anaheim

cuth23b: Nice weather

Ceo21: I like the stadium

Ceo21: traffic is horrendous, though

cuth23b: Oh

cuth23b: i know

cuth23b: Seattle

cuth23b: Great city

cuth23b: Great park

Ceo21: rain

Ceo21: Let's stick around the Bay area

Ceo21: Oakland

Ceo21: I think I'm a Billy Beane kinda guy

Ceo21: I might even lead off

cuth23b: Haha

cuth23b: From Kendall to O'Donnell

Ceo21: Kinda the same thing

Ceo21: except

Ceo21: he runs

cuth23b: I'll be replacing Zito - that's a lot of pressure

cuth23b: "Well he costs $10 million/year less"

Ceo21: How long before they put the whole infield on the right side for me

Ceo21: the opposite field shift

cuth23b: "Trust me, he literally can't turn his hips - he can't pull the ball."

Ceo21: It would be funny to see the 3rd baseman play directly behind second base.

Ceo21: I could learn to bunt...

Ceo21: every now and then, drop one down the left side... just to keep 'em honest on that side of the field

cuth23b: You could ... I could also learn to slide

cuth23b: Both are unlikely to work effectively

cuth23b: IN theory

cuth23b: They could have the shift

cuth23b: Youc ould bunt

cuth23b: And still be thrown out at first

cuth23b: haha

cuth23b: McCarver's analysis of that would be great

cuth23b: "Sweet Mother of Mercy ... I've never seen anything like it in my life."

Ceo21: "O'Donnell does not run well."

cuth23b: hahaha ... he does state the obvious better than anyone.

links for 2006-10-20

• Andy Kessler: Media 2.Uh-Oh: Intro
  (tags: read_later)
• Mitch Hedberg - Wikiquote
  (tags: funny hilarious quotes comedy)
• darkwave tag - Last.fm
  Getting to be my favorite tag on Last.fm
  (tags: darkwave music)
• Avatar site traffic
  Looks like we're all getting trounced by Stardoll
  (tags: avatars myoddcast)
• iSproggler 0.4.3 - Last.fm
  Another iPod/Last.fm solution
  (tags: ipod last.fm)
• Brands, Consumers, Democracy: Who runs the web?
  (tags: interactive Advertising marketing web2.0 branding)

Don't Say a Prayer for Me Now... Save it 'Til the Morning After

I just don't understand how you could go down looking in Game 7 with the bases loaded and a chance to tie or win the game.  That just hurts.

Gotta give it to Perez for holding his own this series... Maine, too.  Much to look forward to next year, but, man, this stings.  I lack the words.

Game 7

I didn't think it would come to this.

I didn't want it to.

I think I'm going to hole myself up in my apartment and not come out until its over.  My whole entire season depends on Oliver Perez.   They better score 12 runs.

I don't understand why we're not starting Darren Oliver.

The guy pitched 6 scoreless the other day... AND...  and this I didn't realize today... he's got a great postseason start under his belt.  In 1996, with the Rangers, he left the 9th inning of Game 3 with a 2-1 lead and two on and none out.  The Rangers bullpen couldn't hold it, so he got the loss, but still...  that makes him a lot more qualifed to start than Perez, who honestly got battered the other night.  He just had a lot of run support.

I don't really understand what goes on in Willie's head.   Maine bats in the bottom of the 5th, only to get taken out after the leadoff guy reaches base in the 6th... that was after he fanned Pujos to end the 5th.  The guy was cruising and he goes to the pen in the 6th inning.  Why strain the pen when your starter is cruising and you know you're going to need at least four innings out of them the next night?   He could have gotten one more inning out of Maine.

So now we get to watch Wild Thing fall off the mound because he can't figure out a windup that works.

They better score 12.  Please, let them score 12...  in the first.

links for 2006-10-19

• Universal Music sues two online video sites | Tech&Sci | Internet | Reuters.com
  Yeah... because these users would otherwise pay for these videos. :/ I thought video was for marketing anyway. Isn't distribution good?
  (tags: music videos stupid)

Referrals for Money and Your Chics for Free

Recruiting is a big industry.  People pay a lot of money to get the right people because the right people are key to your business.  That's why a number of attempts have been made to leverage the power of social networking and recommendations to disrupt the hiring model in the job space.

I've never passed on a job any more or any less because of monetary incentives...   I do it for social capital.  If I actually know the right person for the job, I pass that job on to create social capital with both sides, and for some reason that resonates with me more than the money.  Actually, I think it is because I'm guaranteed social capital, whereas the money always seems like a crapshoot.  If I pass you on a job, even if you don't get hired, but you're good...  and the job was right for you.. .you think of me as a resource and so does the person doing the hiring.  I make social capital that way.

Anyone building one of these systems should take that into consideration.  What good does passing the job on through your system do me if I don't get paid?  Can it help build my reputation as a connector?  How do you enable me to store social capital?

links for 2006-10-18

• BALD R US, bald and balding proud men rejecting the Hair Club for Men
  GOD CREATED A FEW PERFECT HEADS AND ON THE REST HE PUT HAIR
  (tags: bald)

links for 2006-10-17

• apophenia: pre-election cynicism
  Can we elect danah to something? Seriously.
  (tags: politics news media)

links for 2006-10-16

• Cyberface: New Technology That Captures the Soul - New York Times
  (tags: postonmelater avatars imaging animation)
• The Google YouTube Tango, The Nation: Deal Is Not A Good Thing For The Internet - CBS News
  Utterly ridiculous position
  (tags: postonmelater politics)
• Publishing 2.0 » Edelman, Wal-Mart and the Loss of Control in Media
  (tags: postonmelater)

Don't Beat Yourself

This weekend, I was reminded about not beating yourself.

Saturday night, I watched Steve Trachsel make a mess out of a pivotal playoff start by not throwing strikes.  Granted, the Mets offense was nowhere to be found, but Trachsel couldn't make it out of the second inning because he walked five batters.  When you walk that many batters, your fielders fall back on their heels and when you do actually let the other team put the ball in play, they wind up missing a lot of balls by just a half step, which is what happened.

Then, tonight, my Zog team played a fall softball game.  We couldn't field our way out of a hat.  It was awful.  We're normally a very good fielding team, but we threw the ball around and bobbled a lot of easy plays.  We found ourselves down 20-6.  We even managed to score 10 runs with two outs in the last inning, but it wasn't enough.  It was a game that got away because we beat ourselves.

So back to the Mets.  Enter Oliver Perez... a guy who has been beating himself for two seasons by not throwing strikes.  The Mets needed to stay in this game badly.  The bats were cold and Perez was a wildcard.  Well, he wasn't perfect, but he didn't beat himself.  He threw strikes... and kept them close until the Mets offense exploded.  Up by seven runs, he kept throwing strikes even when the Cards started hitting home runs...   three home runs.. all solo shots, because he wasn't walking batters ahead of those hits.  He left in the sixth inning with a big lead, and for a guy who went 3-13 this season, that's about all you could have asked from him.  Unlike the guy who pitched the night before who rang up 15 wins this season, he didn't beat himself.   

That makes such a huge difference in any aspect of your life.  Make the other guy beat you.  I manufactured a run in my Zog game tonight by lining to right and not stopping when I saw the right fielder bobble the ball.  Let him throw me out.  If me makes the play, I'd get up, say, "Nice throw" and walk off... but I was forcing him to be better to get the better of me.  Then, on a bloop single to right again, I ran through a stop sign on the way home.

Let them throw you out at the plate.... don't hand them your opportunity to shine.

Internet didn't kill the radio star

Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 uses the example of the music industry to show why content needs to be controlled to be monetized and I just wanted to share something I learned a while ago.

"As for ceding control of your content, look at what happened to the music industry. Illegal file sharing crippled music sales, and the only saving grace has been the iTune platform, which functions by rigidly controlling distribution."

This actually isn’t true. I thought it was for a long time, being a college student when Napster was big, but I worked on a co-investment in the buyout of Warner Music and studied this hard. There were two much larger factors at play.  First, you have a supply issue.  Big box retail started killing off mom and pop record shops and music-only stores to a much greater degree than the web. Even the demographics that weren’t web savvy and into downloading music weren’t buying music anymore, because people shopped at Walmart and Best Buy and they hardly carried any of the catalogue that the music only stores did. More focus was put on DVDs and video games which were a much higher profit margin per inch of shelf space compared to CDs.  So, if my dad wanted to go buy the Moody Blues first album, he simply wasn't going to find it...  but he could find lots of copies of Madden Football or maybe even a DVD of a live concert.

Then, you have competition for finite entertainment dollars.  Mobile revenues went up… $5-7 a month in text messaging and another $5-7 a month in ring tones… that’s a CD a month when you consider the limited budget of teens.  Mobile revenues and gaming revenues skyrocketed during this time, not because music was free, but because they offered a much more compeling product.  Eight songs for $16 simply wasn't going to cut it when, for ten bucks more, you could get a movie, and for the price of three CDs, you could get a video game to play with your friends for hundreds and hundreds of hours.  Interaction.  Socializing.  Music, at that price, just didn't seem so interesting anymore.  Napster didn't tank the industry... it just proved there was demand for the CD format to get broken up and for music to be obtained over the web.  Apple is taking advantage of that, and they would take better advantage of it if they offered more pricing schemes and less DRM. 

links for 2006-10-14

• The Viral Garden - Top marketing blogs
  (tags: marketing blogs Blogging)
• "How do I use a custom domain with a blogger account?" from the Ask Dave Taylor! Tech Support Blog
  (tags: Blogging)
• New York Daily News - City News - 2nd bolt from blue
  Jeez... at what point do you just go and live in a cave?
  (tags: freaky news)
• The Consumer’s Media Primer at punctuative!
  (tags: fordhamclass consumers media Advertising)

Tom Terrific 2

Glavine's performance last night was wonderfully boring, as usual.  Nice to see Beltran hitting at home, too.  Wagner?  He's John Franco with a 100 MPH fastball...  always out of the strike zone, always makes it interesting.

So I'm totally jumping ahead here, but I hope they sweep, just because it would enable us to pitch Glavine twice against Detroit.   

Is this really the best way to arrange these letters?

Is this really the best way to arrange these letters?, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

If I was an old subway car, I'd be nervous.

After Facebook, what will be the web's next billion dollar exit? Let's build a virtual stock market for startups.

Assuming Yahoo! gets some kind of a deal done with Facebook (can you say motivated buyer?), we will have had three billion-plus acquisitions on the web (Skype, YouTube, Facebook) in the last year. 

So what's next?   Who has the best shot of creating a billion dollars of value?

At first I'd say Craigslist, but I don't really see Craig ever selling.  Perhaps he wakes up one morning and decides it needs a safe home just in case any pissed off New York real estate scammer vows revenge, but, regulatory albatross aside, I think its much more likely he'll "give it to the people" and maybe go public or something.   

LinkedIn?  I'm not sure they engage users along enough dimensions...  it is too much of a business tool rather than the go to social network for adult professionals.

What about  Revver or Spotrunner?  YouTube got sold because they dominated the medium and Google thought they could figure out how to monetize it.  What if these two figure out the monetization first and attract publishers and advertisers....  might be a necessary add-on... but maybe not for a cool billion?

Feedburner is dominating and monetizing a medium, with little competition...  if and when RSS takes off, they could start making bank in a hurry.

You know what would be interesting... and something I would definately monitarily contribute to the production of?  A virtual stock market for startups.  I need something to do in the fantasy baseball offseason.  I'd love to be able to buy and sell "shares" based on the predictive expectations of the crowd.  That might be a very cool experiment.   

Any other ideas for the next billion dollar acquisition on the web?   I don't think it will be us.  Our number is only $750 million.  :)

links for 2006-10-13

• Talkin' Avatars with Oddcast: 10 Reasons to go Virtual Instead of Video
  Where else can you find a blog post that speaks the current time and Central Park weather? :)
  (tags: avatars secondlife virtualworlds interactive advertising marketing video)
• Management by Baseball
  (tags: baseball)
• Logic+Emotion: Letting Go is Violent
  (tags: mevertising branding marketing)

links for 2006-10-12

• The Holy Grail of Synchronization: How to synchronize Microsoft Outlook (multiple locations), Google Calendar, Gmail, iPod, and mobile phone with Funambol / ScheduleWorld. « //engtech
  (tags: trymelater calendars contacts outlook)
• How to Sync Google Calendar with Outlook and Smartphones Automatically
  (tags: outlook trymelater)
• "venture backed", "kleiner perkins", startup, "early stage", "sequoia capital", "benchmark capital", "fortune 500" Salaries - Free Salary Search
  Paul and Rony missing someone, no?
  (tags: vc salary compensation pay)

Former Mets, Current Yanks Pitcher Corey Lidle Dies in Plane Crash into NYC Apartment

Very sad story...   Turns out the pilot of the small plane in NYC was Yanks' pitcher Corey Lidle, who got his started in the majors with Mets.  Lidle died in the crash. 

If it were me, I'd want them to play tonight's game, but out of respect for the family and for Lidle, I agree with Brooklyn Met Fan, they should probably cancel. 

Small Plane Crashes into Upper East Side Apartment Building

Well, this is just bizzare...  A small "general aviation" plane flew into a building on 72nd and York.

A few apartments in the building are on fire...   details coming out.  Hope no one was home.

YouTubers Reaction to Purchase

Pretty reasonable I'd say...  We're not all raving lunatics in the consumer world, you know.  Thanks to Jeremy for the heads up.

links for 2006-10-11

• GigaOM » The Future of Social Networks - Communication
  Couldn't agree more...
  (tags: socialnetworking myspace community communication comments myoddcast)

links for 2006-10-10

• Whois Voki.com [2006-09-26]
  Yay! Check out the address. That's us! We have a name! :)
  (tags: voki myoddcast avatars)
• Breakway brands - September 18, 2006
  (tags: branding brands conversation marketing mevertising myoddcast)
• Ypulse: Media for the Next Generation
  (tags: Advertising marketing youth trends teens oddcastblogroll)
• ESPN.com: Page 2 : Trade Jeter, not A-Rod
  I say trade the both of 'em...
  (tags: baseball)
• List of social networking websites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (tags: socialsoftware socialnetworking myoddcast fordhamclass)

Dear Mr. Moritz...

Please bottle some water from your house and send it to me.

Hair clippings for me to wear as a good luck charm will also do.

 

Some people just have the magic touch...Google, Paypal, Yahoo!, and now YouTube, which just got acquired by Google.

 

We don't really need more money, but if you want to throw a token investment our way, I'm sure we could make some room for you in the cap table somewhere.

I don't really know what to make out of this deal.  Google has the money to spend, and I think this is a better investment than putting up municipal wifi towers up.  What else could they spend it on? 

The upside is that this is a foothold into our video/tv viewing experience and the associated ad revenue.

The downside is that they haven't proven that they quite understand how to do community yet. 

What's fascinating to me is that, at the time of the del.icio.us acquisition, they were "split internally" on whether to make an offer.  How they managed to spend a billion six on such a big question mark is beyond me, just from a decision making point of view, whether or not its a good idea.

Nice quote about instant messaging/e-mail

It’s as if your id had a typewriter. In a world where everything is
instant, the delaying and censoring mechanisms that contributed to a
civilized life are gone." - Maureen Dowd, NY Times, Oct. 7, 2006

 

(I don't subscribe to Times Select... or get the actual paper copy, God forbid... my friend Alicia sent this to me.)

My first post on the Oddcast blog

I'm really getting into these "avatar notes".

links for 2006-10-09

• Duct Tape Marketing Blog - Voted Best Small Business Marketing Blog
  (tags: oddcastblogroll marketing)
• Unit Structures: Selling Social Networks
  Must-reading on the monetization of social networks.
  (tags: socialnetworking myspace facebook myoddcast fordhamclass)

links for 2006-10-08

• Simply Recipes: Chicken Peanut Curry Recipe
  (tags: recipes food)

$200 Million Waste of Time

Chumps. 

Hardware Veterans Retire... Death of Web Investment Prognosticated

So Sevin Rosen says that the market for venture is so bad that they don't think they can make "venture" returns, so they're not going to raise another fund.

And now everyone's flipping out about the changes in the VC market and whether or not there's overinvestment or lack of opportunities.  Chill out.  Seriously. 

Sure, there are a lot of problems people can point to in the venture market, but these guys aren't even playing in the same world as the VCs that get talked about in the blogosphere for their high profile internet service investments.   They're a bunch of hardware guys whose very long and successful careers, like the infrastructure opportunities they chased, are winding down.  They've made a lot of money, and rather than try and figure out how to build the next Google,  Skype, YouTube, they're letting another generation tackle a new generation of completely different opportunities.

This is the experience and focus areas of the firm's partners:

industry veteran of over 30 years.... semiconductor, telecommunications, and nanotechnology

in the early 1980s... was CEO of two high-technology companies...semiconductor and software industries

nearly 20 years as an executive at wireless carrier and service provider companies

joining Sevin Rosen Funds in 1983...

worked with three venture-backed companies in industries such as enterprise software, flat panel display and semiconductors

focuses in areas of imaging, computing, photonics, RF communications, and Semiconductors

director of               Capstone Turbine Corporation, a public microturbine manufacturer

taken a lead role in nurturing... a pioneer in the optical               transmission market

worked with companies in the integrated circuit and solid-state industries...spent 30 years at Texas Instruments

20 years in the semiconductor and networking industry

Chips, networks, displays...  we've got these things now, thanks to guys like the partners at Sevin Rosen, but that's not where the new opportunities are.  The opportunities aren't in the hardware that move the bits faster and faster...  they're in the services that make the bits useful... that capture the bits, organize them...   pair them with other bits for exponential value creation.

To even put companies like YouTube and Facebook in the same article as Sevin Rosin's decision is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  You might as well say that all the medical device investors should retire, too, because investing in purely web based businesses is about as different than investing in chips as you can get.  That's like asking these guys to do genomics.   

Venture is not venture is not venture.  It matters a lot what industry you're in.  It matters what stage you play in.  It matters what geography you invest in.  I've written before that I don't even think that what is commonly lumped together and called venture capital shouldn't even be called a single asset class, but the media, and often limited partners as well, misunderstand these kinds of investments.  Sevin Rosen's departure from the scene shouldn't be taken as anything more than the nail in the coffin on hardware investment, and maybe perhaps a remark on the Texas market...  not an "industry" signal.

Gambler pays off

Kenny Rogers made the "best lineup ever assembled" look like a bunch of little leaguers who had never seen a curveball.

And now, the fate of the pinstripey team lies in the hands of...   Jared Wright.

Baaahahahhahaha.

Chumps.

links for 2006-10-07

• WallStreetFighter.com: Top Ten Things Constantly on Digg That I Don't Have a Frickin Clue What They Are
  Wooo... avatars #1.. err... um... wait...
  (tags: funny digg)
• Myspace.com Founder Issues Report Finding News Corp.'s Myspace Acquisition Defrauded Shareholders of More Than $20 Billion
  waaaaaaaaaa! waaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Cry me a river, Brad. Seriously.
  (tags: myspace newscorp)
• Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Completely Unsubstantiated Google/YouTube Rumor
  I don't think I buy this...
  (tags: google youtube)
• Techcrunch » Blog Archive » FreshBooks invoicing reports how you stack up
  Had Jamba with Mike McDerment when he was in NYC... good guy... I like what they're doing.
  (tags: accounting smb)
• Charlene Li's Blog: Calculating the ROI of blogging
  (tags: Blogging fordhamclass)
• Sun CEO wants to use blogs to disclose
  This plays into Instant Information's strategy... interesting stuff.
  (tags: finance stocks sun blogging fordhamclass)

Why doesn't Apple buy last.fm?

Personally, I don't know if Apple is ever going to relinquish their stranglehold on portable music. Their penchant for cool design and easy of use is difficult to match. However, if history tells us anything, hardware has always been a bad bet for maintaining margins and competitive advantages. The further up the stack you go, the higher the margins and more difficult it is to unseat you.

And in today's world, data is at the top of the stack, not software like iTunes. iTunes may have made it really easy to get people set up on the iPod, but its not what keeps them there. The critical mass of artists in the music store keeps them coming, but it seems to me that its only going to get easier to buy music from more sources in the future, not harder. There's nothing really that sticky about it, actually. No data, no network. I've been switching players a lot, actually.

So I thought to myself, why doesn't Apple buy last.fm and really ramp up the social network features? Scrobble everyone and provide social music functionality right there in iTunes. It would b like when AOL announced that they were building a social network on top of AIM. They already had all my friends and I didn't even have to do anything.

Imagine a MySpace competiter that already knows what music you listen to and on day one tells you who has similar tastes, on top of recommending who you should listen to. Plus, because iTunes is actually selling a ton of music, the company has the leaverage to actually get bands to start setting up camp on their last.fm artist pages. iTunes and the iPod spit out a ton of data that their software doesn't use effectively at all, and last.fm has a really neat application to make the most of that data. What if Apple made all of those little last.fm widgets their own little try and buy mini iTunes stores? I think they could get last.fm at a reasonable price relative to the kind of value they could add to it by integrating it with their hardware and software. Seems to me like a natural fit.

The Oddcast Blog: Hello world.

 As if you couldn't have predicted this when I joined...   Oddcast is now blogging!  Check out CEO Adi Sideman's first post.  I'll be adding posts from time to time as well.

The Dilbert Blog: Attacking Allies

I wonder what would happen, for example, if the United States simply declared North Korea to be an ally, and made a big fuss about it, but didn’t change much else. We could pass a law saying we’ll defend North Korea against foreign attack – knowing that no country wants to attack them anyway. We could keep our military force in the DMZ and redefine it as preventing South Korea from attacking North Korea just as much as the reverse. That would be baloney, of course, but delicious and pleasing baloney.

Source: The Dilbert Blog: Attacking Allies

Two Down, Nine to Go

Remember when Tom Glavine went 9-14, 4.52 for the Mets?

Neither do I.

Last night was vintage Glavine...   boring as hell to watch, and half the time, you're scratching your head about how big the strike zone gets.

And wow, this Dodger lineup is anemic.  Outside of Kent, no one scares you at all.

And once again, Grady Little, thank you for starting Kuo.   We didn't kill him, but 85 pitches halfway through the fifth didn't cut it. 

I'd like to think they're going to sweep now, but its hard for me to imagine T